


In the Light of Day

by Zappy



Series: Crimson Spade [8]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 02:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zappy/pseuds/Zappy
Summary: Nights are never the worst time for Gotham's heroes. It's the day that is the hardest. Hood deals with those sunny hours in as much as he can. Which, naturally, isn't very well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Small warning for reference to self harm. Hoody doesn't deal with nightmares well.

Hood loved the middle of the night. The nights meant seeing Batman, and if he was really lucky- fighting beside him. The best nights were when they just patrolled Gotham side by side, occasionally talking. In those moments, he felt most alive, most  _ human _ .

 

The times that Hood hated were in the middle of the day. After he’d fallen asleep for a few hours, never more than four or five at a time, and always filled with a sense of dread and laughter that woke him screaming. He was lucky the Narrows didn’t care about noise complaints.

 

Afternoons were the time where he had nothing. Nothing to occupy himself, too early to get himself worked up on if he’d see his beloved Bat that night. The light shone too brightly, the noise too loudly. He couldn’t even think about his childhood, his teenhood, hell even most of his adulthood. For all that they were hoods, and he was  _ named _ Hood, he didn’t have a lot of them.

 

He’d taken to keeping all articles about Batman from the papers. He’d pin them up on his wall, everything that even remotely referenced the Dark Knight. It helped him, in the daylight hours. He could stare at them and think over what he  _ did _ remember.

 

Sometimes, however, it just made things worse. 

 

The voice in his head, the one that laughed and mocked and wanted nothing more than to unleash chaos, and didn’t much care if it was on Gotham at large, or just Hood’s mindscape. It taunted him with the  _ nothingness _ that he was.

 

It was memories that made a person, that shaped them as they played their part in the stage called Life. It was what you experienced and how it changed you that molded you. Hood had nothing.

 

Therefore, he was  _ nothing _ .

 

Hood didn’t know if he had a family, a cousin, an aunt who tutted at him, an uncle who thought he’d ought to be more of a man, a father to disappoint and a mother to worry.  _ Hood didn’t know _ . He didn’t even have the stub of a connection to throb as if they’d died, the grief. He lost everything, but what did that everything include?

 

He could play the piano. Muscle memory, he supposed, he at least had that. Once he learned that’s what his fingers were doing when they fidgeted, he looked up all the piano songs he could. He couldn’t read music well, but that was less muscle memory and more the sort he didn’t really have anymore.

 

Was he a nerd in highschool? Did he  _ go _ to highschool? Did he experience Senior Prom? Had he ever dated? That was a thought he couldn’t decided if he wanted one answer or another, as the mere idea of feeling what he felt for the Bat for anything  _ else _ was preposterous. But who knows, whoever Hood had been had died, so maybe he had.

The feeling of emptiness never left him.

 

Not even years later, years filled with people who came to care for him, who welcomed him, who shared memories with him. They were all broken in some way, hurting, in pain, angry or tortured with the world. They felt loss, their connections severed and throbbing.

 

Sometimes Hood envied them their pain.

 

Pain would be better than this...numbness. This complete disconnect.

 

It started to eat him. He fooled himself into thinking it hadn’t been slowly eating him since the very beginning.

 

Most days Hood woke screaming, but as much as he wanted it to be, it was never screaming from memories of  _ before _ . No, his nightmares were always of  _ after _ . Hood had nothing but what he’d discovered for himself, he was good with chemistry, he could play the piano, he was utterly and irrevocably in love with a Bat. That wasn’t so much a sign of before as the others, but he wouldn’t think that it  _ couldn’t be _ , because it was at the core of his being. 

 

Sometimes he almost could answer to the name Jack without forcing himself to. It almost felt like his. As if it’d always been his. But that second of hesitation never left him, and he knew it couldn’t be. Wasn’t natural enough.

 

The only thing he never doubted was who he was as Red Hood. He wasn’t sure where he got the name, why he put on the hood, why he was at ACE Chemicals that night, why he lived in the Narrows, why why why why  _ why _ ?

 

He was hollow, where memories and purpose and the foundations of life should have been. He tried to steal (adopt) the purpose of Batman, and it worked. On some days. But many days were filled with him handcuffing himself to the arms of a chair before he could claw into himself too badly.

 

Batsy didn’t  _ like it _ when he hurt himself too badly, didn’t _ like _ the look of scars on his white arms that Hood felt uneasy explaining. And anything that upset Batsy, upset him deeply. Batsy was his  _ core _ , the center of Hood’s being. If he left… If he left then there would be no more Hood.

 

If he wasn’t  _ Hood _ ...he didn’t  _ exist _ .

  
The afternoons were filled with thinking things Hood tried not to remember, if only because that way it felt like he didn't have his memories on  _ purpose _ . If he lived in the now now now  _ now _ , then he didn't have to worry about the  _ then _ .


End file.
